


Dreamcatchers Don't Work

by radio_antlers



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Future Fic, General Horror Elements, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29576034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radio_antlers/pseuds/radio_antlers
Summary: "Damn you, dreamcatcher," Molly hissed. "You're supposed to prevent things like this."A look into one of Molly's nightmares.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Dreamcatchers Don't Work

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first time trying to write something angsty, so I apologize if it isn't the best! Her nightmare is related to the one shown in issue #41, but the actual story is set years after camp.

_Shamble; verb. To walk in a lazy, awkward, or unsteady manner. A word often associated with the walking dead._

_From what she could tell, Molly was shambling, shuffling, dragging her feet across the tangled mess of grass and weeds beneath her. One foot was completely bare, like a splash of white paint against the dying green, and the other slipped inside a navy blue pump, the shiny exterior scuffed at the toe. Molly didn’t wear shoes like that…where were her trusty red sneakers?_

_Her eyes trailed up from the ground and saw the familiar, concrete patio of her backyard, lined with shriveled white rose bushes. There was a table sitting in the middle of the stone platform; it was sleek black, made of a material that wasn’t quite metal, but still clinked like it if you tapped your nails on it. The odd thing, though, was that there were four chairs surrounding it instead of five. There were five chairs there before, right? One for her mother, one for her father, two for her sisters, and one leftover for her?_

_Nevertheless, Molly shuffled to the back door, peering inside the house. It was dark, except for the singular, flickering lamp sitting by the dining table. No one was inside, and the silence was so thick you could cut through it with a knife. How curious._

_The screen door nearly fell off when Molly tried to open it. That was even more odd; if a door so much as creaked in this house, it was fixed by the end of the day. The tile (also a brilliant white – Molly felt like she lived in a hospital sometimes) was cool underneath her bare foot. It didn’t feel particularly good or bad. It was just there._

_Trekking through the empty, silent house, Molly tried her best to figure out what happened, where she’d gone to, and how long it’d been since she came back. All of her thoughts became mush before she could even string them into a complete sentence, because there was almost nothing to make sense of. It was dark, then light. She was asleep, and then she woke up. That’s what happened, right?_

_She wasn’t sure._

_Molly’s hand fumbled with the bathroom doorknob, just out of her sightline. In the end, it took a mighty shove from her shoulder to un-jamb the door, an action that would usually be followed by a jolt of pain and a dull ache, but it never came. Whatever. Maybe she’d just grown a thicker skin. The light shuttered to life when she walked inside, mimicking a weak strobe._

_But in the few dim flashes, Molly glanced at herself in the mirror. And what she saw made her heart screech to a halting stop and her blood turn to ice._

_Molly didn’t look like herself. At all. Her skin had gone all stark and ashy, soft paisley green eyes reduced to cloudy, grey orbs sitting in the sockets, and lips dry and cracked. Her hair, which had kept some of it’s sunny, buttercup color, was now thinner, matted in some places with dirt and grime and other disgusting things that shouldn’t be in a person’s hair. A tattered, navy blue blouse clung to her upper body, the seams ripped, and fabric stained. Her hands were boney and wouldn’t stop shaking, and her fingernails had been worn down and chipped, like they’d been scratching furiously at something, like she’d been trying to escape a confine or-_

_The coffin. The mold. Making herself and that woman late for something, but not knowing what it was or why._

_Realization kicked in, fast and violent. Her eyes widened and her mouth began to open into a bloody murder scream, and-_

And then she woke up.

XxXxX

Molly bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath. Her eyes darted around the room, frantically scanning her surroundings to make sure that that awful scenery was just a part of that twisted dream.

She wasn’t lying on the bathroom floor in her long abandoned, childhood home. The lights weren’t flickering, and her clothes weren’t the tattered remains of borrowed garments she’d been forced into for family photos and to please her mother. She was in the bedroom of her and Mal’s apartment, as far away from New York as she could possibly be while in college. The main lights were shut off, but crisp moonlight shone through the window, illuminating the room ever so slightly. And she was wearing pajamas; black shorts and a random band tee, stolen from her fiancée.

Speaking of her fiancée, Mal, surprisingly, was still fast asleep. Molly viewed that as a miniature victory; she’d outgrown the shrieking aspect of jumping awake. She’d tell her about it in the morning, after they’d both woken up.

Instead, she looked over her shoulder, staring daggers at the dream catcher hanging above her side of the bed. She’d made it during her second year at camp, with brilliant green string, silver and white beads, and a lightning charm, taken from one of Mal’s broken earrings to add a little _flare._ Molly was told that they would ward off bad dreams and hang onto the good ones, let her sleep peacefully for once.

Unfortunately, it’s spell hadn’t lasted for long.

“Damn you, dreamcatcher,” Molly hissed, wiping the stray frightened tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. They were hot, like boiling water. “You’re supposed to _prevent_ things like this.”

The contraption just stared back at her, as much as an inanimate object could stare. It knew what it was supposed to do, Molly was sure of it. Maybe it was doing this to make sure that she could still handle a scare or two. Maybe it was spiteful, tainted by the cruel energies of her old house; it hung on the wall there before. Or maybe this whole idea was just a dumb myth that only worked by the power of suggestion.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was already full.

Molly knew what she would be doing after class, then. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
